Utah Valley University’s School of the Arts and School of Education will present the third annual Arts in Education Conference, “Cultivating the Creative Mind: Creativity and Innovation as 21st Century Skills” on Oct. 1 in the Sorensen Student Center.

The first of its kind in Utah, the conference is designed for K-12 pre-service students and faculty, art specialists, professional educators, administrators and individuals interested in education theories and practices.

Cognitive neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang will be the keynote speaker. Immordino-Yang is an assistant professor for education at Rossier School of Education and an assistant professor of psychology for the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. She studies the bases of the brain’s emotions, social interaction, culture and its implications for development and learning. Immordino-Yang is also the inaugural recipient for the Award of Transforming Education through Neruoscience. The award is co-sponsored by the International Mind, Brain and Education Society (IMBES) and the Learning and Brain conference. She lectures nationally about how the arts foster creativity and the latest in neuroscientific and developmental evidence of what creativity is and how it is grounded in emotional and cognitive processing.

In addition, the conference will also feature keynote performances by Resonance Story Theatre and the dance theatre work, “The Next Generation,” commissioned for educators and performed by UVU School of the Arts students and faculty. Poster and breakout sessions will be dedicated to research in arts education and art-specific pedagogy and integration. Conference participants will engage in hands-on methods and strategies based in current research to use within the K-12 and university classrooms.

The conference will take place in the UVU Sorensen Student Center on Friday, Oct. 1, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The conference is free but registration is required. Educators in the field will have the option to attend the conference at UVU or connect into it through virtual technology. Conference keynotes will be streamed throughout the state to regional and district arts networking conferences.